SHOUT me a beer. Good on ya, mate.

Message to Siemens Hearing Aids — WHAT?

Anyway, as one of your customers (Huge Honkin’ Grampaw Behind the Ear Hearing Aids), we wanted to give you some “customer feedback” in the form of this email.

Because we are not able to come to your office with our shotgun.

Our first suggestion is that you disable the innovative feature that, every now and again, gets both hearing aids to automatically and without warning jack up volume levels to over 10 billion decibels.

While this makes for an excellent party trick involving soiled shorts and socks, it also causes our eyes to cross for extended periods of time. Getting them to uncross, and with all the sock washing, it’s taking up too much of the day. Revolutionary Hearing

Our second suggestion is quite revolutionary.

You know how in a crowded Chinese restaurant or meeting room or possibly Monster Truck races, when you are trying to have a conversation with people sitting NEXT to you or ACROSS from you?

Yet they let you hear, with total clarity and no distortion, the people sitting from 10 to 20 feet directly BEHIND you. Especially if they have beards. (I don’t know why. Maybe facial hair strains and purifies their words? It’s a mystery).

I hope you can see how this is a problem if, say, you are trying to hear the client or relative or parole officer government official with whom you are meeting. Hard Architecture Challenges

And in a loud environment with “hard architecture”, what you hear is this.

Granted, if you carry the handy dandy remote control that’s conveniently the size of a small shoe, you can change “programs” and slowly optimize the tone to this.

Now, I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything. Because when I am not wearing my Huge Honkin’ Grampaw Behind the Ear Hearing Aids, I am unable to hear important things, like police sirens or myself farting.

And maybe it’s just because I am cheap, but after spending $8,000 on technology to overcome crappy ear genes, and that 1970 Jimi Hendrix concert at the OU Fieldhouse, I sort of expected to have x-ray hearing.

iHearing Aid

Because if, say, I had given Steve Jobs $8,000, I bet Apple could have created nano iHearing aids that would let me hear actual conversations and possibly things people were about to say but still only thinking. Which would be especially helpful in P.R. and when meeting with parole officers government officials.

I also wanted to thank you sincerely for the volume wheels on my monster grampaw hearing aids.

At least when I can’t really hear someone, I’m able to crank those mothers up so that it sounds like everyone is SHOUTING AND CLAPPING GARBAGE CAN LIDS, but SOMETIMES I can actually hear the person I want to hear.

Unless he is like a former South African client who talked sooo quietly that you had to lean in and strain to hear his precious, soft-spoken words of awesome wisdom. The wanker.

In Your Ear, Buddy

Anyway, Mr. Siemens, (how do you stand the mocking?), you may recall that my previous In The Ear hearing aids (teeny weenie baby model with limited horsepower and torque) did not have old-fashioned volume wheels.

So you heard what the electronics thought you should hear. And, if you happened to be chewing at the exact same time someone was talking to you, it was like holding your fingers in your ears while chewing on rocks and marbles. Which was very helpful.

But at least the baby hearing aids were small and discrete. They did not hint to retail clerks that you were PROFOUNDLY DEAF and BRAIN DAMAGED by that Hendrix concert, like the Grampaw model, which prompts many people to either avoid talking to you or to speak LOUDER and s-l-o-w-e-r than normal, which makes you feel so special that you want to stage a hearing jihad.

In closing, can I ask you to please consider a joint venture with Apple, and to start working on nano x-ray hearing aids, ASAP. (Note: they should include Bluetooth capability that does not require users to wear a stupid satellite dish thing on their chest. Puhlease.)

Mr. Siemens, if you get this right, you will make HUGE profits from the tidal wave of deaf Baby Boomers, most of whom attended that Hendrix concert with me in 1970.

And with these vast profits, maybe you could change your name and stop the mocking.